Dude, seriously? We are talking about the land of the free, and you continue to be astonished that people from first world countries just go to the US to do business and then leave again?
The Netherlands has had a visa waiver program with the US for a very long time. Since the author has entered the US a couple of times before to do very similar things, I don't blame him for just going.
I do blame the company for just paying him and expecting him to show up without checking whether that is legal.
I'm not really sure what he expected when moving to the US? Employee protection? Powerful corporations checked from screwing you over?
What was he thinking? "Yeah that stuff happens all the time in the US, but surely when I move there it won't apply to me" -- and if they did believe they were owed this protection, on what basis?
Who was going to protect his employee rights for him? That US corporation he works for which has to be forced to provide such rights when they are operating outside the US? Hahaha
This sounds like someone who could move to work in Qatar and be upset they end up working to support a system of slavery.
As far as i know, most of the outsourcing companies have a contract with the employee that will make the employee pay a huge fine if he quits them after moving to the US. I'm not sure about the legality of this, but a lot of companies enforce this somehow.
(source: i'm indian and i have a lot of friends who moved here on a H1B through the 'outsourcing' companies).
The boundary between "business" as covered by B-1 visas and "work" can be fuzzy. If you are employed by a US company and you get paid by said company while in the US (i.e. you're not on vacation) then your trip can be interpreted as working in the US. It's not clear which Mozilla entity is Daniel's employer but I've seen similar situations. Companies that have a lot of international employees traveling to the US typically know what sort of papers or preparations need to happen to reduce the chance of these things.
Another crazy example, if you own a house in the US but you're not permitted to work there, fixing your own house counts as work and could get you deported banned from entry. You have to hire someone else to fix it.
Borders are stupid... And the US has been this way basically for ever. If anything I think they got a little better vs. e.g. 10 or 20 years ago. I used to work for a Canadian company that did a lot of business in the US and there was some time period (~15 years ago) where any company employee attempting to travel to the US had a lot of difficulty because those guys got it into their heads that the company was doing something funny.
You can run into trouble in various other places in the world as well.
I think he wants to make sure people know what they're in for when they leave the US to start a company. In the US, as soon as you pay someone a salary, you basically own them. You can work them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with no vacation or minimum wage. You don't have to provide benefits, and you can fire them for absolutely any reason at any time. You even own everything they do in their free time.
That's simply not the case anywhere else in the world, and it may be surprising to people from the US.
Yea i know people who did this undere 'don't ask don't tell' policy. But the parallel comments here are claming that companies in US are setup to do foreign payroll, labor laws which I find really hard to believe.
I don't think it's that. Supposing an employee had access to approve and pay invoices for a US company, and then moved to a country that had no extradition treaty with the US.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were worries about someone working from a sanctioned country as well. Would paying their wages break sanctions?
Its unfortunate but at the same time its the bitter truth. The visa restrictions/dependency create a slavery system within the software industry at-least in US as far as I have seen personally. The person fighting must have received his green card by now I guess which is why he is able to come forward like this. On the other hand if some one is on short leash (PIP) like this with a H1B visa, they would spend their time and energy on finding another job before their status becomes illegal.
I have personal experience of a PIP which was personally motivated and I was naive enough to think that I had all the evidences to prove my case. At one point of time I was thinking whether to go to court or focus my energy to find a better job. As some one said earlier the HR is not for the employees, they are for the company. The management chain is more interested to protect one of they own, even if there are evidences.
wild. So the paperwork and the visa etc was all actually filled out with the details of the weaker guy? Including the photo and suchlike? crazy that gets past the companies immigration lawyers
Also, doesnt he just get fired straight away and lose his visa? Seems like very high effort and low chance of success, I must be missing something
reply